Umbra Pneuma
by shelleyrusalki
Summary: Bellatrix Lestrange is sent to the Dreadfort with a rather precarious task; to be discreet.


**Summary:**

**Bellatrix Lestrange is sent to the Dreadfort with a rather precarious task; to be discreet. Crossposted from ArchiveOfOurOwn - if you want to read the updates, then keep checking over there on this link: /works/2043579/chapters/4437513 **

**Notes:**

**So, here lies (what is to be) a massive mix up of books and movies and shows. I will be including more chapters, as obviously the first is more of a set-the-scene chapter. You'll get what I tagged eventually! ;)**

**For Bellatrix, it is before the Battle of Hogwarts. She is perhaps 'slightly' less cuckoo then the portrayal by Helena Bonham Carter (as much as I loved it) in the movies. I'm trying to keep her as canon as I'm truly able... and whilst I think I've got her family history in a decent timeline, JK Rowling was obviously pants with maths & dates - so, sorry if it seems messed up!**

**For Ramsay, he is much more his book character, and less his show portrayal. There will be references to Reek/Theon (of course). I will also make small references to Myranda, who only appears in the show. To avoid ASOIAF spoilers to non-book readers, this is set before Theon helps Ramsay retrieve Moat Cailin.**

* * *

"My lord, if we should we fall... all but you?" Her voice crawled out of the darkness.

"This is no war." He hissed, though her foolish worry had not angered him. "It is mere slaughter."

They both stood atop a mountain side at the edgings of a forest and looked across at the castle grounds. Other Death Eaters were with them, although hanging back in their usual dim silence amongst the trees.

"Can I speak plainly?"

"Only if you doubt me."

"I don't doubt you, I never have, but you know I cannot trust him. _He has secrets that he hides well_."

"That you sense and I cannot?" The flash of red in his stare was an uncomfortable play against the eerie white of his skin.

"You taught me well, my lord. You know that I have been nothing but your most faithful since you plucked me from the dirt." Her gaze faltered to the Black Lake, which stretched out for miles before them at the foot of the mountain. "I would welcome death for you, but not today._ Not _today. His guard holds even with friends in sight.. and we are no friends of his."

The Dark Lord paused for a moment, and Bellatrix Lestrange watched with wide eyes as he ran his fingers down the length of his wand.

"He has served me better than many. Are you so arrogant to assume that going to Azkaban for your loyalty means anything to me? I have no use for incarcerated _friends_." The slits in his nose seemed to blow smoke into the world as though from a sleeping fire dragon.

My blood alone puts me above all of your wretched. "Ridding the chess board of a queen does not necessarily make for an easy win, where there are still so many pawns. You know of the Unbreakable Vow that he and my sister made."

The dark wizard gritted his teeth lightly. "I am suprised that it did not satisfy your thirst."

"Albus Dumbledore still had power in his name, but the man himself was old and frail... It did not." The dark witch licked her lips as she stared at the castle in the distance, a black silhouette speckled with hundreds of tiny fireflies. "And still, even now, _he_ cowers within the stone walls of a dead man."

Lord Voldemort seemed to ponder on this for a few moments, before a dismissive hand gesture. "I thank you for your counsel." He said, simply.

Bellatrix bowed her head low. She knew that it had been good counsel, but a bitter taste was always left when her Lord did not like to be wrong. That he might harbour doubts of her over the mongrel. Yet, she knew that it would not be long before she caught him, and poked her toys through his traitor skull. Severus Snape was merely a snake swimming upstream, and lucky in that he never got tangled in the reeds or smashed into the rocks. Her spears would get him one day, and that was a comfort. _Always wriggling free with such artistry that it could even deceive the Dark Lord_... Such artistry could even garner small amounts of admiration from the pits of the eldest Black sister._ I will flood his mind and see all that there is to see. Me, only me; all loves, all lies, all memory_.

Something cold and smooth, as silk and leather, began to coil round her leg.

"I must give you one more moment to show your loyalty; before we begin."

* * *

It was the dead of night when her feet touched the ground again, with wet squishing beneath her boots. An ancient forest, Bellatrix knew. She could hear admist the silence that all flora was talking, and all fauna listening. A full moon hung high in the sky, its light trickling through the tree canopies.

It was cold here, unusually cold; for a place that had not yet faded to brown. Her breath was hot behind her mask and it steamed into the air around her, joining with the woodland fog. Through thick leather gloves the witch felt that each tree took root into further depths of the world.

_Legilimens_. Her eyes closed beneath the heavy silver. Her mind searched for leagues around, weaving patterns above and below; first for other witches and wizards, then intelligent beasts, then nothing. She was alone, save for the presence of some weirwood trees. There were several that shrieked at her, all small and dying. Their mouths opened and closed in her mind, and their eyes streamed red. _Look the other way_.

Bellatrix felt a red light filter through then, so small that she had almost missed it. And then it appeared to her with a mocking smile, brilliant white but in a shroud of shadow. _Why do you hide from me?_ Flashes of it pierced through her in waves she welcomed, but there was resistance that felt like static in her skull. _Or have you been hidden?_

She knew her direction then, as her eyes fluttered open, and began to trudge along the forest floor. It had been years since she had been in a place such as this, relatively untouched by the hands of man.

The old gods had been forgotten by those in the true West that Bellatrix came from. Westeros had been hidden well from that defective lot. The lords here had the bloodlines of Squibs, who had all been sent here at one time in history to flourish. They manifested magic from time to time, and many of their underlings and small folk still worshipped the old gods, even if they did not believe in magic. They all played a big part in the eternal struggles between the larger holy powers, and so where therefore protected by the Wizarding World - even from the days of old. Before there was an Iron Bank. Before there was a Ministy of Magic. Before the majority of those with magical blood had split to the West, and some to the East. Before her family tree was even documented with quill to parchment. Before the days of Runes.

Bellatrix felt the hairs on her arms stand icily beneath her layers of black cloak. Despite there being no sources for at least a hundred leagues, she could still feel the heaviness of magic lingering deep within the forest. _How strange it is, that such a foreign place feels more like home than any I've had_.

Perhaps it was familiar power she felt. The Gaunts had lived here for years, in the tradition of Salazar Slytherin who had fled here and made it his home. They had been disillusioned before moving to England in the far west, and had moved straight into the jaws of poverty. Poverty had unhinged them, and the Blacks at the time had been unsuccessful in reaching out and past their unrelenting pride. Cassiopeia Black, along with her mother Violetta, had both suffered numerous venom poisonings before they finally gave up on the Gaunts. Bellatrix remembered how she would beg Cassiopeia, whenever she came to visit, to show her the scars left from King Cobra bites. It always made her great aunt swell with pride, as hideous and disgusting as each one was. Her father would try to convince her years later that it was lingering venom that caused Cassiopeia to grow so depraved as she aged. He had also told her, not long before he had been wiped from the world, that her great-grandfather had fought with Marvolo Gaunt, but failed, to obtain a guardianship over his pureblood daughter.

Bellatrix knew that if a witch or wizard married a Muggle or Squib from the lands of Westeros and beyond, then they were not considered to have such dirty blood. If Merope Gaunt, her Lord's pure mother, whose Imperius charms had never been matched, had done that instead then she could have saved her sacred blood from taint. Yet, she was young. Merope had been barely nineteen years old when she welcomed death. _My Lord knows that, and killed them all for it._

The Dark Lord had entrusted her with these secrets, and Bellatrix freely gave her family secrets, new and ancient, in return. He had also divulged how he had tampered with the memory of his uncle to convince him that he had committed the Gaunt murders, and so was sent to Azkaban in his stead. Only Albus Dumbledore had known such precious secrets, plucking them from weary forgotten heads, and now he was long dead. _What I would have given, before that most unfortunate fall, to have had the chance to turn him into an Inferius and mine gold from that rotting brain_. The witch sighed.

Trees bowed an opening a few metres ahead, and she apparated to the top of the tallest one before the break. The light of the moon spread across many fields at the edging of the forest, lighting the velvet green an eerie blue. In the distance was a huge fortress seated in shadow, seen only by the occasional glint of its stone, at the banks of a great river.

Wind flapped at the cloaks of the eldest Black sister as she perched on her branch, and beneath her patterned mask her eyes narrowed. Her Lord had advised her not to approach the castle without an invitation.

"This acting _Lord_ likes to think himself cunning, but he is not like the father. He may even find you to be a valuable asset. More so than his dogs." The Dark Lord had said as she was preparing to leave, and Bellatrix though she had hidden her scowl well. "Of course, if he has any wits at all."

"How do I get an invitation, without also earning distrust?" _They pray to old Gods of the Earth... Yet these savages don't know true magic, and are mistrustful of it. _

"Wait in the forest. Get lost in it, if you must, and you will not be waiting for long." To her he seemed far away for a few moments then, pondering on something that she would have loved to sink her teeth into. "Earn _his _trust first, I suspect that will be easy for you, but understand that the more powerful you seem then all the more he'll want to possess you. If the father happens to turn up at any point, then make him your priority. I'm sure that the father would be most interested to have a true witch on side. Take this small opportunity as a reward, Bellatrix. I will not worry for you."

That He might have ever worried for her made Bellatrix's throat tighten. Swallowing it away, she closed her eyes once more to try and reach for the great weirwood in the distance. Flickering pictures crept though her mind, all an ethereal white, and all with that mocking smile. _You're hidden in the castle walls_. Then she heard a wolf in the distance, perhaps by another weirwood, howling at the top of her lungs. Oversized lungs, that seemed to be blistered with ache. The mouth of the tree seemed to glisten, as she left it and pummeled South through the wind. It was almost too far out of reach, but she managed a glimpse through another thickened forest. _A direwolf._ Bellatrix smiled too.


End file.
